Cash Box Magazine

Cash Box was a weekly magazine dedicated to the music and jukebox industries published from July 1942 to November 1996. An alternative to Billboard Magazine, Cash Box included regional chart data, hit songs by city, radio station, and record sales, popularity by jukebox, and charts by genre including country and R&B music. Initially, Cash Box listed songs with artist and label information, alphabetized by label, making it easier to track the impact of specific labels on the music scene. It also featured news of tours, insider gossip, album summaries, and photographs found nowhere else, as well as stories on thousands of singers, bands, and musicians, both famous and not so famous, rising stars and fading meteors, long-time stars and one-hit wonders. Later issues included sections for Canada, Great Britain, Belgium, Holland, Japan, Mexico, and other foreign countries. In addition to the information about music and albums, the magazine also included information about the jukebox industry. Cash Box is an invaluable source for the study of music, the music industry, and popular culture in the second half of the twentieth century.

Also, because Cash Box based its charts and content on the music played on jukeboxes rather than radio, it covers the music interests of a less affluent clientele and a different demographic. Not everyone was able to afford a radio, but did frequent places of entertainment and social interaction that had jukeboxes. These places were located in inner cities, rural communities, small towns, and ethnic enclaves. Consequently, Cash Box includes information about under documented communities that are not available in other, similar sources.

Material for this collection contributed by the Earl Gregg Swem Library, located at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.